To celebrate what in the US we call 3.14 or PI day, today I’m offering stories that deal with mathematics and circles. First up, an app named for the great philosopher who is credited – even if perhaps ahistorically so – with finding that ratio and ratios in harmonies. Technology has long introduced innovations that […]

(CC-BY-SA) Lloyd Morgan. We live in a fragile world, and I’m immensely grateful for the opportunities we’re gifted to share ideas about music making and engineering, sound and tools. I will continue our regular content, but I also want to ask all of our readers to reflect on our friends and colleagues impacted directly and […]

Who says we should have only one set of assumptions when it comes to how music software should work? Renoise remains a vision of an alternate reality where mod trackers – musical editors with vertical, pattern-based views instead of horizontal, linear piano roll views – are our present and future. And Renoise keeps getting better […]

It’s a great time to be coding 3D – and a great time to be destroying your workday playing with 3D – thanks to free and open resources for OpenGL, now even in the browser. If lovers of 3D dreamt up a standard for getting hardware-accelerated 3D in a browser, they’d have a tough time […]

“Gem Drops” is a rich, varied compilation covering “experimental electronic hip-hop inspired” music, with artists such as Anenon, yuk., Juj, Devonwho, Shigeto, and Sumsun. The 21 tracks were selected by curator Aaron Meola. It’s the sixth release from the collective Dropping Gems, and 100% of revenue will go to the American Cancer Society. Pay what […]

The competition for your audio interface dollar is pretty heated these days, but MOTU’s latest – the Audio Express – packs a pretty impressive feature set for something costing US$449 list. It’s both a 6×6 audio interface and a mixer, with standalone mixer functionality so you can mix signals from the front-panel knobs without a […]

From the early days, a 2003 printout of Processing’s source code. Photo (CC-BY) Niels Heidenreich. Processing helped bring coding to designers, artists, and creators who never thought they’d code. The beauty of it is, in a world where people often feel technology gets worse with age, Processing is getting better. Thank co-creators Ben Fry and […]

Pair a veteran software synth maker with a traditional artist, throwback graphics with expressive interactive control of live sound, and what do you get? SynthX is an iPad synth that gives some hope for the genre, tailored to the medium by Way Out Ware and Jim Heintz, who created the critically-acclaimed TimeWARP ARP simulation (as […]

For a change of pace, I adore this self-directed music video by Heidi Spencer (of Heidi Spencer and the Rare Birds), Milwaukee-based folk artist, working with Heather Warren-Crow. The work is the opposite of what we get from most music videos; personal rather than cliched, gentle rather than gimmicky. It’s the opposite of what you’d […]

You might need to be an internationally-touring DJ to buy one, at EUR750, but the Travelteq Trip Sound suitcase is awe-inspiring at least as a design gimmick. The aluminum roll-around is designed first and foremost as a suitcase, as in the things that hold your laptop and clothes when you’re on the road, and is […]